Tuesday 19 June 2007

Pic of the day: From the anime Lucky Star.

Got Japanese course

That was fast! I ordered it on Sunday so they could not have mailed it before yesterday morning, and yet I had the slip in my mailbox when I came home from work today.

The package was surprisingly small. It contained a CD-ROM with the software, a CD with the Norwegian introduction to modern language learning, and a few small booklets. It all fit into one small package. But there is enough stuff there to keep me occupied for months to come. Except I will no doubt still want to do all the usual stuff, so Light knows when I'll get time for this. I'll try though, at least in the beginning. For today, installation and watching the Norwegian presentation.

And perhaps watch a little anime before going to bed. I mean, it's Japanese, right?

***

The introductory booklet and presentation were rather interesting. They were clearly made for people of my generation or older, who had not benefited from the recent advances in language theory when at school. A point that was particularly stressed was training the ear by listening to lots of conversation. Nothing wrong with vocabulary drill (in fact, an awesome vocabulary drill program comes with the package) but the focus is on listening to - and later reading - lots of text that you kind of understand. (The program gives a translation for each line of text, but it is an approximation only. It is not intended to be word for word.) Grammar is very low priority.

This all fits me well, since I mainly want to understand the language, not use it. The language experts claim that there is no benefit to using the language from day 1. It doesn't exactly hurt, but you won't be talking better in the long run than if you just quietly observed. This is what many children do when they suddenly come to a foreign country. They say as little as they can get away with for a time, and then suddenly they talk a whole lot.

I have to wonder, though. I have watched anime for years now. It is subtitled, and often you can also guess what goes on from the action. But I have only picked up very little Japanese. Am I really that stupid? It certainly does not fit my self-image. (Your image of me may vary...)